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Just How Deadly Is Assad's Arsenal? (Much Worse Than You Can Imagine)
Foeign Policy ^ | July 16, 2012 | John Reed

Posted on 11/22/2012 4:54:28 PM PST by lbryce

The latest estimates say that the Assad regime has hundreds of tons of mustard gas, a blister agent, and large stockpiles of sarin and possibly VX, both of which are nerve agents -- all of which can be launched by Scud missiles, artillery, or aircraft, according to Charles Blair, a specialist in chemical and biological weapons at the Federation of American Scientists. "I've heard that Syria has 100 to 200 missiles with nerve agents loaded and ready to go, but that seems extreme," said Blair, noting that the nerve agents are usually stored separately from the weapons and that exact estimates about the size of the regime's stockpile are almost impossible to come by.

Although the U.S. government has released only vague estimates as to the size of Syria's chemical and biological weapons stockpile, Dempsey told lawmakers in March that the arsenal was "100 times the magnitude we experienced in Libya." Libya acceded to the international Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004 and had largely destroyed its useful stockpile of such weapons by the time Qaddafi's regime fell in 2011, according to Blair.

(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 2004; 2011; assad; biological; blisteragent; iraqiwmd; libya; libyanwmd; mustardgas; nerveagent; nervegas; poison; roachspray; syria; syrianwar; syrianwmd; vx; wmd
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To: tips up
All the WMDs not found in Iraq?

No; Syria has had a massive indigenous chemical weapons production capacity and stockpile since the 1970s.

21 posted on 11/22/2012 6:01:25 PM PST by Strategerist
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To: Mike Darancette
So how did Syria build this massive stockpile without the world knowing?

Their stockpile has been widely known and commented on publicly for decades. Nobody did anything about it.

22 posted on 11/22/2012 6:03:28 PM PST by Strategerist
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To: lbryce
So, you're saying that Assad has all of Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction that were hauled away in the months leading up to the invasion? Tell us all something we didn't already know.
23 posted on 11/22/2012 6:16:02 PM PST by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
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To: Jumper

I think not. The emotion generated by a seemingly diabolical weapon no doubt prompted it’s outlawing but the use of gas on the battlefields of the First World War ultimately proved impractical. If they were so worked up over it’s use perhaps they should have taken the step to outlaw war altogether but such a thing is wishful thinking at best. Had they had more of a devastating use they most certainly would have been used in WW2. The use of gas in a sealed chamber proved to be the more effective , as the Germans demonstrated in the concentration camps. Ironically outside of Auschwitz, where Zyclon-B, a prussic acid compound was used , the gas of choice in all the others was carbon monoxide, generated by using the diesel motors of captured Russian submarines. As to the European experience, I don’t know of gas being used against civilians in WW1 as it was in WW2. Two generations of men in my family fought for Europe’s freedom and both barely survived doing so. Thank you but I don’t need to be reminded of wars cost.


24 posted on 11/22/2012 6:17:10 PM PST by jmacusa (Political correctness is cultural Marxism. I'm not a Marxist.)
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25 posted on 11/22/2012 6:19:28 PM PST by RedMDer (May we always be happy and may our enemies always know it. - Sarah Palin, 10-18-2010)
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To: Joe 6-pack

‘’Or in a Japanese subway’’.<, Yup. Grand Dad always used to say that in a city in a large building or subway was where gas would be most lethal. He’d say “You don’t need an army. Just one person with a canister’’.


26 posted on 11/22/2012 6:20:34 PM PST by jmacusa (Political correctness is cultural Marxism. I'm not a Marxist.)
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To: Joe 6-pack
Or a Japanese subway....

And yet with far less education and money the London and Madrid subway and train attacks killed far more people with plain old explosives, to say nothing of killing even more people with even less money and some box cutters.

Chemical weapons have no business being included in the same category as nuclear and biological weapons as "WMDs"

27 posted on 11/22/2012 6:36:04 PM PST by Strategerist
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To: lbryce

Italy used mustard gas against Ethiopia at the start of WW2. Those stores of mustard gas were mined when Rommel pulled out of Africa after the second battle of el Alamein.

After WW2, the Germans were brought back to the Qattara Depression to fence it off. Today, armed U.S. drones still monitor 24/7 those stockpiles near Benghazi.

It is quite likely that Ambassador Stevens was attempting to give that Libyan mustard gas to the Syrian rebels so that Assad would instead get blamed for using it inside Syria.


28 posted on 11/22/2012 6:42:27 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack

One thing I never see discussed is what will happen when the muzzies gain control of the chem weapons if the Assad regime collapses.


29 posted on 11/22/2012 6:56:14 PM PST by misanthrope ("...Everybody look what's goin' down.")
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To: cookcounty

+Step One: Hamas engages Israel, partially depletes IRONDOME defenses.

Step Two: Hezbollah in Lebanon, with 15X the number of Al-Fajers, depletes Irondome completely.

Srep 3: Syria launches gas weapons.

...and then....
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A real problem with all of these scenarios is why the hell Syria has to launch a thing against Israel?
Current Syrian government is as pro-Israel as possible in that part of the world.
I don’t remember any shouts form Assad about how bad joos are, no big or little satan quotes etc.


30 posted on 11/22/2012 7:00:20 PM PST by cunning_fish
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To: cookcounty

+Step One: Hamas engages Israel, partially depletes IRONDOME defenses.

Step Two: Hezbollah in Lebanon, with 15X the number of Al-Fajers, depletes Irondome completely.

Srep 3: Syria launches gas weapons.

...and then....
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A real problem with all of these scenarios is why the hell Syria has to launch a thing against Israel?
Current Syrian government is as pro-Israel as possible in that part of the world.
I don’t remember any shouts form Assad about how bad joos are, no big or little satan quotes etc.


31 posted on 11/22/2012 7:00:45 PM PST by cunning_fish
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To: hannibaal
The folks who attacked us on 9/11 have ties to Iran. Furthermore, it is Iran that took out our embassy in Lebanon and the baracks of both the USMC and the French there. It is Iran that is moving Hezbollah operations into the western hemisphere, and it is Iran that is operating in Africa in support of Isamsts there, and the current head of AQ, Egyptian surgeon Zawahiri, has pretty good relations with Iran.

We need to get out of the silly mindet that these groups cannot work together against what they see as their ultimate common enemy.

32 posted on 11/22/2012 7:02:30 PM PST by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge)
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To: Southack
28 posted on Thu Nov 22 2012 20:42:27 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time) by Southack: “It is quite likely that Ambassador Stevens was attempting to give that Libyan mustard gas to the Syrian rebels so that Assad would instead get blamed for using it inside Syria.”

Documentation, please?

33 posted on 11/22/2012 7:04:46 PM PST by darrellmaurina
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To: misanthrope
One thing I never see discussed is what will happen when the muzzies gain control of the chem weapons if the Assad regime collapses.

Been estimated that it will take about 30,000 NATO troops to control Assad's WMD after the fall of the regime.

Turkey wants missile defense from the US real bad right now.

Syria first acquired Chemical WMD from Egypt. They have used highly intense political skills over the decades to skirt international sanctions. The Muslim brotherhood in Egypt also controls a large chemical WMD stockpile. As do the Saud's and the Iranians.

34 posted on 11/22/2012 7:26:40 PM PST by justa-hairyape
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Comment #35 Removed by Moderator

Comment #36 Removed by Moderator

To: lbryce

Well, we know this report is just a lie.

The liberals told us, repeatedly, and often violently, that there are no WMDs in that area, that W concocted the scheme just to invade a swell country so that he could get lots of oil for his oil buddies.


37 posted on 11/22/2012 7:40:07 PM PST by Ghost of Philip Marlowe (Prepare for survival.)
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To: jmacusa

Gas is only another parameter in the combined armed approach to warfare. It basically slows the enemy troops which now have to don costly and expensive protective equipment... or die in greater number, whichever the calculation dictates.

By itself it is not very effective, just don a mask and cursory protection, in the gas attack is pretty much ineffective. However, as a terror weapon, as a Sarin Tokyo style surprize attack, or combined with a conventional attack, it can level the playing field and add to the confusion and flanking of the enemy.

Much as Napoleon combined infantry, cavalry and artillery into an effective mean, add gas to that combination to complicate things and it works.


38 posted on 11/22/2012 7:46:49 PM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)
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To: jmacusa
Please just research a little about the Europeans aversion to using chemicals and gas, that is the only point. I was not inferring that in Belgium the gas was used against the civilian population, but rather that during WWI there is a town at the front lines that is famous, near the famous Flanders fields. In France there is an area where the Germans gassed the French trenches, and they literally just pushed the earth over the dead, in some places their bayonets still poke upward in testament to the soldiers who were ready to go over the top but did not survive the chorine, which still haunts over the grounds in small clouds, which visitors are cautioned to avoid so as not to be burned - been there and got the t-shirt. That effort you allude, the War to End All Wars, was a noble gesture, however I fear that as long as Old Men send Young Men to Fight there will always be war. It is really too bad that conflict is central to mankind's existence and the history of nations is always a history of war.

On a brighter note, Happy Thanksgiving!

39 posted on 11/22/2012 8:17:57 PM PST by Jumper
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To: Jumper

Happy Thanksgiving to you too. What still makes large areas of France and Belgium unsafe isn’t ‘’small clouds’’ of gas but unexploded artillery shells. WW1 was a war where artillery dominated the battlefield. Indeed, the machine gun and artillery fire accounted for more casualties than gas in WW1. War is many things, all of them horrible but it remains a dynamic of the human condition. Consider what Heraclitus said”War is the father of all things’’. Or British historian J.F.C. Fuller: “Either war is obsolete or men are’’ pax.


40 posted on 11/22/2012 8:33:39 PM PST by jmacusa (Political correctness is cultural Marxism. I'm not a Marxist.)
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